Tuesday, January 3, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump rang in the new year together with Joseph "Joey No Socks" Cinque — a convicted felon with ties to notorious Gambino crime family boss John Gotti, a recently released video has revealed.

Cinque can be seen in a video obtained by the Palm Beach Daily News, cheering loudly as a tuxedo-clad Trump runs through a number of campaign promises before the hundreds of guests attending the New Year's Eve bash the President-elect threw at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Saturday.

"The taxes are coming down, regulations are coming off, we're going to get rid of Obamacare," Trump can be heard saying as an exuberant Cinque stands next to him, pumping his fists into the air.

Cinque's Sunday appearance with Trump might raise some eyebrows.

Beyond a 1989 felony conviction for possessing nearly $100,000 worth of stolen artwork, Cinque "used to be friends with John Gotti," according to a New York Magazine profile from 1995.

Cinque was also "shot three times and left for dead" in a 1980 incident that authorities described as "a hit," according to the profile.

Further, Saturday's Mar-a-Lago party was far from the first time Cinque cheered on Trump.

An Associated Press report from this spring showed that the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences, a company owned and operated by Cinque, has awarded more than a dozen of Trump's golf courses, hotels, casinos and private clubs with so-called "Star Diamond" awards "of true excellence in hospitality."

The same report also found that about half of the roughly 30 people listed as "trustees" to the company are Trump friends or business associates.

Trump, meanwhile, was listed on the company's website as its "ambassador extraordinaire," and he even appeared in a 2009 tribute video to Cinque in which he said, "There's nobody like him. He's a special guy."

But when asked by reporters about Cinque in May, Trump denied knowing anything about him or his criminal past.

"If a guy's going to give you an award, you take it," the President-elect said at the time. "You don't tend to look up his whole life story."

The Trump transition team did not immediately return a request for comment on how the President-elect knows Cinque or why they appeared together Saturday.While alongside Cinque, Trump brought up the terror attack that rocked Turkey, suggesting that the bloodbath necessitates a Mexican border wall.

While standing alongside Cinque, Trump also took a moment to address the terror attack that left scores of nightclub revelers in Istanbul dead over the weekend — and how the bloodbath somehow necessitates a Mexican border wall.

“We will build a wall, you know that. We will build a wall,” the President-elect told the raucous crowd.

“And speaking of walls,” he continued. “In Turkey tonight — has anybody heard? Big disaster took place in Turkey tonight. Many, many, many people killed…It’s a horror show. So we’re going to get things running properly.”

ISIS claimed responsibility for the Saturday attack, which left at least 39 people dead and dozens more wounded, calling the lone gunman who carried out the massacre a “heroic soldier of the caliphate.” The suspect had yet to be named and located by Turkish authorities early Tuesday.

The President-elect made building a wall along the country’s southern border one of his main campaign talking points, frequently promising his supporters that it will be a “great” and “beautiful” wall.

But his pledge to construct a border barrier has gone under several renditions, with the President-elect admitting in November that it might actually end up “part wall, part fence.”